Whether we fish or not, this time of year most of us fortunate enough to live on a lake year-round keep at least one eye on the wondrous natural cycle we call “ice-out.”
Today at Branch Lake, where I make my home, ice-out has begun its somewhat predictable stages.
Near the warming shoreline rocks there are ribbons of open water. Out on the lake, the color is changing from light blue to a lead gray.
Listen closely and you can hear the ice shifting like a tectonic plate. A crack, then a soft moan, as if to signal an aging pang and an impending change.
I, like my late father who loved this lake, enjoy the ice-out wagering game.
“Ice will be out of Branch by the end of the first week in April. Bet me five bucks?” he would challenge with a big grin.
He rarely lost.
Last year ice-out at Branch Lake fell on April 12. In 2021, ice out was April 1. Over the past decade, the typical ice-out range at Branch Lake has been April 10 to April 25.
Just for the record, lake ice, when broken up by wind and temperature changes, does not sink.
As the air warms, the ice thins from the top and the bottom. This is called honeycombing.
Watching the lake clear from its icy blanket is a thing to behold.
Without fail, the day after ice-out is followed by men in snowmobile suits maneuvering their trolling boats close to shore, hoping to hook up with a hungry salmon, invariably on a Gray Ghost tandem streamer fly.
North of here, Moosehead Lake is always the focal point in springtime ice-out prognostications. Last year the big lake lost its ice sheet on April 29. Ten years ago, ice on Moosehead held on until May 7. Ice-out dates for Moosehead go back to 1848.
Climate studies show that Maine lake ice-out dates, Moosehead included, have shifted to about nine days earlier over a 150-year span.
The old normal was ice-out about May 5 to May 10. The new normal is ice-out between April 20 and April 30.
The coolest ice I have ever seen was an iceberg floating near a harbor off the west coast of Newfoundland.
My late wife Diane and I hired a guide who took us to the looming iceberg in a freshly painted mustard yellow dory. Alongside the behemoth iceberg, the guide chopped off a couple of chunks and put them in our camping cooler.
We learned that these freshwater icebergs can be 5,000 to 100,000 years old. Some may be as old as a million years. Ice from an iceberg is quite a bit more dense than the bagged ice cubes you buy at the local store for your camping trip. Yes, as ice cubes in your drink, they hang on and on.
That night back at the provincial campground, my neighbor saw me chopping from this big chunk of very blue ice beside my cooler.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Well, I said with a haughty air, “I am about to pour 10-year-old whiskey over 10,000-year-old ice cubes. Would you care for one?”
